The Eile Project

_________________________________________________

Introduction to The Eile Project

Our ongoing project investigating border subjectivities, border-linking/making; territorial fictioning, based in, across, and about the political border between Ireland and the UK is now in a new phase.
The Eile Project is an ambitious 2 year multimedia visual art work that uses the subjective, spatial, political and imaginative, yet highly contested, concept of borders/bordering to respond to some of the immediate political and environmental challenges of our time.

The project is sited on the geo-political border between Ireland and the UK; we are a border family as Paula is from Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal. She grew up between Ballyshannon, Enniskillen (Co Fermanagh), as well as living in England, and as such she has traversed the Irish border across her whole life. We now return to these places from Sheffield, with our own children, each year; the border remains at play across generations, time, and space. The context of the Irish/UK border condition is now given renewed prominence as it sits at the core of the maligned ‘Brexit’ negotiations, as the possibility of a ‘hard border’ is, almost unimaginably, being mooted.